Kate Williams

FIRE-UP FRIDAY!

Today’s tip for firing up your class of poets:

BRAINSTORM ON THE MOVE!

Stretch ideas and vocabulary by enacting features of the poem-to-be with your class and inviting accompanying verbs, adverbs, adjectives, images, bringing the concept alive. Works every time for me!

EXAMPLES:

Ocean theme:

All standing up, lead class in ocean enactment. Slowly stretch arms far and wide, simultaneously eliciting words to describe the enormity of the sea, such as huge, vast, majestic, massive.

Sway slightly, making splashy sounds, encouraging the children to copy. What is the sea doing? Splashing, swaying, rocking, swirling? Perhaps there’s a word that rhymes with ‘swirling’ (whirling, twirling, curling), you might suggest, making the shape with your arms… but a storm is brewing, what is the sea like now? Prompt for adjectives – wild, loud, rough, angry, perhaps, then verbs, as your movements become ever more pronounced and your sounds ever louder – surging, roaring, leaping, hurling, racing, crashing?

As the children’s responses start to gush like the sea, catch some of them on the board, but get straight back to the movements – which could be subsiding again now, gradually growing calm and serene, sustaining the children’s involvement and their flow of language.

Dragon theme:

Do similar, inviting your class to stand and follow your actions, but this time, move and act like a dragon. Bear in mind that these magical, mythical creatures can pretty well be what you like, so let children respond as they wish, perhaps with a mix of scary, powerful, creepy and clownish words and images.

How do dragons move? Perhaps start with leaps, charging and roaring, then switch to fun clowning, prancing, dancing, tap-dancing? Let in the fun! Make dragon faces and respond to theirs. What are the dragon’s teeth doing? Help your class think up actions and accompanying words for what his paws, claws, wings and tail might be doing, and again, dash down a selection of their input on the board.

When you feel the time is right, hand out your writing sheets or, preferably, word-jotting warm-up sheets, perhaps in spider-diagram form. I usually start my classes off with ‘Dragons like to …’ or ‘Watch out for the dragon. He/she may…

Chances are they’ll all be scribbling away before you get time to introduce writing techniques – alliteration, similes and the like, but don’t be surprised if you find they’re incorporating them anyway! That’s how into it they are, ten minutes in.

Have fun!